


I Didn't Know I Needed a Hero Until I Found You

by IvyCpher



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Bullying, High School, Hurt Lance (Voltron), Lance (Voltron) Angst, Lance (Voltron) Has Anxiety, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pining Lance (Voltron), Racism, Racist Language, Swearing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2020-03-07 15:19:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18875833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IvyCpher/pseuds/IvyCpher
Summary: Lance was always told not to fight, so he didn't. He took all the shit everyone threw at him without complaint. Until one day when the new boy, Keith Kogane swooped in and fought for him.





	I Didn't Know I Needed a Hero Until I Found You

Lance was always told not to fight, to not make a mess of himself, to not make it so people thought he was nothing more than a piece of Hispanic trash. Because he wasn't. He wasn't any of those horrible names and slurs people called him, he wasn't and he would never be. And for the sake of his mother, he never fought back. He just walked away or stood there and took their racist and racially incorrect jabs at him. Because Lance would never give anyone more room to walk all over him. 

It hurt Lance, it really did. Sometimes it hurt so much that he couldn't breathe and he would black out and zone back in under the bleachers while in the midst of sobbing his eyes out. It was okay though, just as long as he didn't let himself fall apart in school or at home. It would break his mother if she saw how much these things tormented him, and it would just give the kids at school more shit to throw at him.

***

It was a football Friday and the whole school was teeming with energy, Lance liked the late night games and the cheap nachos at the concession stand at the football field. He liked everything about football Fridays except for the players themselves. He didn't care if his school wouldn't go to the playoffs without them, he would rather have them gone than them win a hundred games for the school.

It was the end of fourth period and time for lunch for Lance, he walked down the hall and fingered with the lock on his locker. He always had trouble with the dial locks, he put his combination in twice before the lock finally popped open. He reached inside his locker and pulled out a brown bag that held his lunch, he was just about to turn around when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

"You know what today is, McClain?"

Lance swallowed a lump in throat and turned around, three of the largest guys from the football team had swarmed around him. Though his fist clenched tightly around his lunch bag, he tried to keep his face grimace free. "The uh- first football game of the season?" He asked unsurely, when it came to these guys no answer was ever the right one.

The guys around him snickered, the one with his hand on his shoulder just shook his head and tsked. "You're wrong, amigo. Man, I can't believe you don't know what day it is," he grinned evilly and leaned in close to Lance, so close that he could smell his sickening amount of Axe body spray. "It's the day we start our new pre-game good luck ritual. Now I'll give you one more chance, do you know what the ritual is?"

Lance opened his mouth but then closed it and shook his head. He had backed up as much as he had could without stepping into his locker. He half wondered if they were just going to shove him in there and leave him until his friends noticed his absence from class.

"No? Well how inconsiderate of you! We made our whole ritual  _ just for you.  _ Since you don't know, I might as well tell you then." He looked back at his friends as they tried to suppress their laughs. "Why, it's  _ beat the beaner. _ It has a nice ring, doesn't it?" He suddenly pushed Lance back hard against his open locker.

Lance hissed as the back of his head hit the top of his locker, for the first time in his life he found himself wishing to be shoved inside a locker. "Come on- can't we just go to lunch?" He asked slowly, trying to smile. "It's breadstick day."

"Fuck breadstick day, we can always just skip and go down for C lunch when they give the extras out for free!" One of the bullies, the one that wasn't pinning him to his locker said.

Lance was suddenly pulled away from his locker, he dropped his lunch to the ground. The bully that had been holding him tossed him to the floor besides his lunch. "Besides, breadsticks won't give us good luck in the upcoming game!" He laughed, his goons chiming in behind him.

One of the bullies kicked his lunch sack with such force that it split down the middle and skidded down the tile floor, it's contents of bagged Cap'n' Crunch, a ham sandwich, and a few cheese sticks spreading everywhere. The bag of Cap'n' Crunch opened when it flew across the hallway, the brightly coloured cereal rolling every which way.

Lance looked away from his ruined lunch and up at his bullies, the deciders of his fate. He could feel his heart beating fast in his chest, so unnaturally fast, he knew what was coming. He was going to black out here in the middle of the hallway while these brutes beat him all to hell. He tried to take in a breath of air to maybe calm himself, to stop the process, but each big gasp of air never felt like enough. Never enough. His head was light and heavy all at the same time and he couldn't do anything.

The last thing Lance saw before he blackout was one of the bullies picking him up by the neck of his shirt and pulling his fist back for a money shot.

When Lance woke up, his head was pounding and he felt hot all over. He was sitting against the row of lockers and everything was sore. It took him a moment to register that his bullies all lay fallen around him like giant trees. He looked up and saw a guy with horribly outdated hair in the style of a mullet with bruised knuckles standing over the mess and panting.

The guy looked down at Lance and pushed his hair back, he crouched down and held out his hands to help him. "Are you okay?"

Lance nodded softly, he took his hands and stood up. Blood rushed to his head and he felt incredibly dizzy for a moment while his vision when blurry. He wanted to say thank you, but all that came out was, "Who are you?"

"Oh- yeah sorry, I guess I should've said that first maybe." He let go of Lance's hands once he was sure he could stand on his own. "I'm Keith, Keith Kogane." And he smiled a smile that Lance didn't expect a guy to have after beating the shit out of four guys that were two times as thick as him. "I'm new here, it's my first day actually."

Lance looked down at the boys on the floor, two of them had swollen eyes and the other two had a mix of broken noses and bloody mouths. Just looking at them made his stomach churn so he looked back at Keith. "Sorry that the welcome wagon wasn't much," he muttered.

"It's fine, I'm more worried about you. I was late to class and saw that-" Keith stopped and looked a Lance for a moment. "I saw that they were being a real bunch of assholes and I had to do something. You passed out for a while- did they beat you that hard?" He asked quietly.

Lance shook his head softly, "No, at least I don't think they did. I don't remember any of it really, it was just an anxiety attack that knocked me out. Nothin' to worry about."

Keith bit his lip, "Do you want to go to the nurse? To get cleaned up and checked out?"

"No- No, I'm fine thanks. I just really want to go home and sleep this off," Lance sighed.

Keith casted a look over his shoulder to the food all over the floor, "Why don't I drive you home- uh?"

"Lance, I'm Lance McClain, and no I can't have you driving me home. It's your first day, you'll miss half your classes."

Keith rolled his eyes, "Even if I did stay in school, Lance, I don't think I'd be able to focus much. If you let me drive you home it'll be the end of it. I won't be able to think about anything else if I know you went home alone while you're hurt."

Lance bit his lip, finally he sighed and gave a small nod. "Let's blow this popsicle stand then, Keith."

A thing about the school that Lance both loved and hated was that the staff never gave a fuck where the students went. As he and Keith walked down the hall right passed the secretary office, he explained this. "They don't care as long as you don't miss so much that they have to send out a truancy letter."

"How is this place even running then?' Keith asked as they walked out the double doors and into the parking lot. "They don't care where you guys go, they let guys beat up other kids? Jesus it's like hell."

"It's not all that bad, really. The lunch is pretty good." Lance shrugged. Though he had nothing to compare it to, Lance just assumed that all other schools were more or less similar to his own.

"How aren't you mad?" Keith asked. "It makes me mad and I haven't even been enrolled here for a full day. I've been to tons of schools, and none of them are like this." He walked across the parking lot and stopped at a black motorcycle.

"I don't know, I guess I'm just used to it." Lance looked at the bike and then looked at Keith, it took him a second to register that they weren't walking to his house. "Wait, you have a bike? And you're allowed to drive it to school?"

There was only one helmet, Keith took it off the handle bars and handed it to Lance. "Well how else am I supposed to get to school? I got my driver's license as soon as I could, I don't like depending on other people."

Lance took the helmet and ran his fingers across its smooth surface, it was warm from sitting in the sun all afternoon. "Well most kids here don't have cars unless they're three times owned and falling apart." He put the helmet on and clicked the buckle under his chin. "Aren't you going to wear one?"

"Well I only have one," Keith threw a leg over the side of his bike and pushed in the kickstand. "And you're my rider so it's only fair that you get it, now hop on and let's go."

Lance slid onto the seat behind Keith and hesitated before he put his arms loosely around his waist. His mind was behind him and they hadn't even started moving yet. One moment he was about to get the hell beat out of him and now- he was on the motorcycle of his very own black knight. It all happened so fast that Lance wasn't certain it was real. He closed his eyes and tightened his grip around Keith's waist as he started the bike and backed up out of the parking slot.

But- even if it wasn't real, even if it was just some fantasy dream inside his head while he lay blacked out on the school floor. Well, that would be okay by him.

**Author's Note:**

> This all started from the idea of Keith swooping in and beating the shit out of a ton of bullies. I listened to Bonnie Tyler's 'I need a hero' on repeat for the majority of the time I spent writing.


End file.
